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Installing NVIDIA RTX 5090 Drivers on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (April 2025)

Problem​

When I first tried to install the official NVIDIA .run driver package (570.181 / 580.76.05) on Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS, I ran into serious issues:

  • After installation, the system booted only into a TTY (command line) — no GUI.
  • nvidia-smi reported “No devices were found”, meaning the RTX 5090 was not recognized.
  • Removing the driver allowed me to log into the desktop again (falling back to AMD iGPU / software rendering), but the RTX 5090 was completely unusable.

This happens because the current official NVIDIA Linux driver builds do not yet fully support the RTX 5090 PCI ID. The installer forces Xorg to use the unsupported GPU and crashes GNOME.

Solution (Working)​

Thanks to a Reddit post by safety_lock_off, there’s a workaround that actually works on Ubuntu 24.04.

👉 Instead of using the .run installer, use Ubuntu’s graphics-drivers PPA.

Steps​

  1. Add the PPA:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
    sudo apt update

  2. Check available drivers:

    ubuntu-drivers devices

    Look for:

    nvidia-driver-570-open

    ⚠️ Important: The open variant works. The non-open one does not.

  3. Try installing:

    sudo apt install nvidia-driver-570-open

    You might see an error about conflicts with existing 550/570 packages.

  4. Clean up old drivers:

    sudo apt purge 'nvidia*'
    sudo apt autoremove --purge

  5. Install again:

    sudo apt install nvidia-driver-570-open

  6. Reboot:

    sudo reboot

That’s it. After reboot, the RTX 5090 should be recognized, and you can run:

nvidia-smi

to confirm.

Notes​

  • Ubuntu 24.04 LTS does not ship out-of-the-box drivers for the RTX 5090 (as of April 2025).
  • Only one of my DisplayPort outputs worked initially — keep that in mind if your monitor stays black.
  • This is basically using an “earlybird” PPA channel where NVIDIA driver support lands first.

References​